and you have no clue how close we came to that war. I got to sit in on training that taught us how to survive the coming nuclear attacks on the surface ship (sitting duck) I was on at the time. (They didn't like it much when I raised my hand and asked why we'd even care if it came to that.)

As I stated before, it wasn't Reagan that ended the Cold War. It was the fact that the USSR was finally led by intelligent individuals like Gorbachev. The Russians were figuring out on their own that the insanity was no longer in their best interest. Their expansionist history was no longer profitable. The farther they strayed in their conquests the larger the strain on the homeland. Afghanistan also truly kicked their butts.

We on the other hand were itching for a fight. Our military had been on hold for years doing nothing more than playing cat and mouse spy games with the Russians and the hard core fighters wanted to play with all their new toys. Weapons were stockpiled high and the military industrial complex needed someone to go explode things to create new needs. Reagan was their guy. The atmosphere I watched inside the Navy as it appeared he would slip into office was frightening. These guys truly wanted blood and Reagan was saying all the right things. How we managed not to blow everyone up in those first few months of his administration is still a puzzler to me.

Tom, you're out of your league here in this discussion. You didn't see what was going on in the trenches where wars truly start. All you have is what the media and particularly your party fed you at that time . You were as clueless to the true dangers as was all the rest of America. You can do your typical thing now and blame my attitude about this all on the liberal media filling my head with bullshit but the truth is, during my time in the Navy, I was often largely out of contact with most media other than their own internal news service and that was only throwing out gung-ho, kill the commies stuff. If anything I should have been brainwashed from that crap.

Go on with your illusions. Just know that whenever you start spouting them on here you'll be in for a fight.

Art